China cyber attacks against Google pure fabrication

10:01, February 24, 2010

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and some other newspapers have published articles indicating that cyber attacks targeting Google and several other U.S. companies were from China. Such allegations are arbitrary and biased.

These articles take as evidence that hackers' IP addresses could be traced back to two schools in China. However, it is common sense that hackers can attack by hijacking computers from anywhere in the world. This fact also explains why hackers are hard to be tracked down.

Computers in China are easy to be hijacked by hackers as internet security technology and services are still underdeveloped in China. The majority of Chinese internet users also lack security awareness and adequate protection measures.

The hackers' IP addresses could by no means vindicate the newspapers' allegations that the attacks were carried out by Chinese citizens or from within China.

Certain newspapers went even further by indicating that the Chinese government and the military might have supported those cyber attacks.

The New York Times says the Lanxiang vocational school in eastern Shandong province, one of the schools from which the cyber attacks were said to originate, has military support. Another school, the Shanghai Jiaotong University, "has received financing from a high-level government science and technology project."

The New York Times went to great lengths to mention that "graduates of the (Lanxiang) school's computer science department are recruited by the local military garrison each year."

The paper, however, did not care to tell its readers that a school in China does not need to have any special relationship with the military to have its graduates in uniform. It is also true in the United States, where the New York Times is based.

China's attitude toward cyber attacks has been unequivocal and has adopted laws against such crimes, as China is one of the countries that bear the brunt of cyber attacks. It is way far-fetched to say that cyber attacks -- even if they were to originate from China or were to be carried out by Chinese citizens -- would have the support of the Chinese government.

The U.S. government, on the other hand, takes a dubious attitude toward cyber attacks.

According to media reports, the U.S. Homeland Security and Defense departments have both openly recruited hackers.

People with a "blackhat perspective" and know how to "do threat modelling" are the best choices, said Philip Reitinger, Department of Homeland Security deputy undersecretary, at an information security conference last October.